H.R. McMaster: ‘There is a military option’ for North Korea

(In other news, China has said it opposes North Korea’s new missile activity and

the essence of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue is a security issue and the crux is the disagreements between the DPRK and the United States.

“China is neither the focus of the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, nor the core to resolving the issue. Neither is it the propellent of the current tensions,” she said, urging parties directly concerned to take up their due responsibilities.

Translation: It’s your problem; deal with it as you want but don’t do anything we won’t like. — DM)

President Trump’s top national security aide said Friday that there is a military option for handling North Korea’s missile and nuclear testing, even though it’s an option the Trump administration does not want to employ.

“There is a military option,” White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said at the White House. “Now, it’s not what we would prefer to do. So, what we have to do is call on all nations, call on everyone to do everything we can to address this global problem short of war. So, that is implementing now these significant sanctions that have just now gone into place. And it is convincing everyone to do everything that they can — and that it’s in their interest to do it.”

But McMaster acknowledged that the clock is ticking with each provocative test North Korea runs.

“We’re out of time,” McMaster said. “We’ve been kicking the can down the road, and we’re out of road.”

McMaster was joined at the White House by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who agreed that the UN is running out of options when it comes to imposing new economic sanctions.

“There’s not a whole lot the Security Council is going to be able to do from here,” Haley said.

Haley’s comments suggest that she won’t revive an attempt to push an oil embargo through the U.N. Security Council, after China and Russia opposed the measure last week. Instead, she argued that the resolution which passed instead of the more-stringent embargo would be a strong deterrent to the regime if it is implemented effectively.

“If you look at the resolutions that have passed over the last month, the two of them, they cut 30 percent of their oil, they banned all the laborers, they based 90 percent of the exports, they banned joint ventures,” Haley said. “in the words of North Korea, we’ve strangled their economic situation at this point.”

McMaster said the sanctions will take time to have a maximum affect, but North Korea’s decision to launch yet another ballistic missile over Japan put renewed urgency in his public message. That’s an apparent warning to Russia and China, both of which oppose additional U.S. military buildups in the Asia-Pacific region.

Their comments came one day after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on China to implement the oil embargo unilaterally.

“China supplies essentially all of North Korea’s oil,” Tillerson told reporters in London. “I am hopeful that China — as a great country, a world power — will decide on their own and will take it upon themselves to use that very powerful tool of oil supply to persuade North Korea to reconsider its current path towards weapons development, to reconsider its approach to dialogue and negotiations in the future.”